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The CW is adding a one-hour drama project centered on a transgender teen, The Hollywood Reporter confirms. Written by playwright-musician Kyle Jarrow, Ze revolves around a Texas teenager who announces that she is transgendered and will be living life as a boy. As his dysfunctional family spirals into identity crises of their own, he discovers that despite his appearance, he may be the most well-adjusted of them all. Milk's Michael London will executive produce the CBS TV Studios project. The project's title, Ze, refers to the gender neutral pronoun. Past plays by Jarrow, who penned 2010's Armless,

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Exclusive: The CW is taking on a controversial subject with Ze, a drama project centering on a transgender teenager. Written by Brooklyn-based writer-playwright Kyle Jarrow and executive produced by Michael London (Milk), Ze is described as a raw, quirky family drama about a Ftm (female-to-male) teen and his family. A personal choice takes on controversial public significance when a Texas teenager announces she is transgender and will be living life as a boy. As his dysfunctional family spirals into identity crises of their own, he discovers that he might be the most well-adjusted of them all. CBS TV Studios is producing Ze, whose title represents a non-gender-specific reference (like he or she). While there have been a handful of transgender characters on broadcast series, most notably one played by Rebecca Romijn on ABC’s Ugly Betty, this is the first time a transgender person would be the lead of a primetime show.

FX has put in development Inside, a drama project from playwright-screenwriter Kyle Jarrow and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Emily Ziff Cooper’s Town Prods. The semi-serialized cop drama follows a San Francisco homicide detective who discovers his real father is a convicted serial killer who claims to be innocent of murdering the cop’s mother. Hoffman and Ziff will executive produce, with Sara Murphy also producing. Jarrow, repped by CAA and Madhouse Entertainment, had his feature Armless premiere at Sundance, and his spec Good Samaritan sold to Voltage Pictures.

A look at what's new on DVD today:

"Black Lightning" (2009)

Directed by Dmitriy Kiselev and Aleksandr Voytinskiy

Released by Universal Studios

"Wanted" director Timur Bekmambetov produced this Russian action flick about a man and his flying car, using the same effects team that worked on all of his previous films including "Night Watch." A Russian trailer is here since where we're going, we don't need to understand words.

"7th Hunt" (2010)

Directed by Jon Cohen

Released by Vanguard Cinema

A motley group of young adults are abducted and forced to fend for their survival at an abandoned military training center in the middle of nowhere in Jon Cohen's thriller.

"Alien Vs. Ninja" (2010)

Directed by Seiji Chiba

Released by Funimation

A selection of last year's New York Asian Film Festival, Seiji Chiba's crazy genre mashup may just be "the best and wittiest movie ever to air at 2am on the SyFy Channel" in the future,...

In its first development cycle under its deal at CBS TV Studios, Denis Leary and Jim Serpico’s Apostle has sold 3 projects: 2 at CBS and one at the CW. The sales come 3 months after Apostle sealed pacts with CBS Studios on the broadcast and Fox TV Studios on the cable side after 7 years at Sony TV. The CBS projects are Mind Games from writer Roger Wolfson and the previously announced medical drama Cross Roads from Elle Johnson, while the CW drama is Trigger, from playwright Kyle Jarrow. Mind Games is about an impassioned female psychologist specializing in memory who teams up with a tough-as-nails police detective to solve crimes. Trigger is a fast-paced cop show that follows four twenty-something cops/adrenaline junkies who get fast-tracked into the elite Street Crimes Unit when its previous members are all busted for corruption. Of Jarrow, Serpico says, “we’ve discovered a rock star.

The line-up for the 18th Raindance Film Festival was announced today at a press launch held at the May Fair Hotel in London. This years line-up includes 77 feature films, 69 UK premieres and 133 short films, special live events, exclusive Q&As and masterclasses.

The festival will run from September 29 – October 10.

Opening the festival on Wednesday 29th September is Jackboots On Whitehall – a satirical animation about an alternative history of World War II where the Nazis seize London and England must band together to prevent a full on invasion. Star voiceover cast includes: Ewan McGregor, Rosamund Pike,Richard E. Grant, Timothy Spall, Tom Wilkinson, Alan Cumming, Richard Griffiths, Stephen Merchant and Richard O’Brien. It will be followed by an after-party with live set from rising Us indie band stars Airborne Toxic Event and DJ set from one of the most influential DJs in the UK – Andrew Weatherall. The following day will...

London – This year's Raindance Film Festival in the British capital will come alive to the sound of "Jackboots On Whitehall," as Edward and Rory McHenry's puppet satire opens the shindig.

The McHenry's movie, whose voice cast includes Ewan McGregor, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Timothy Spall, Tom Wilkinson, Alan Cumming, Richard Griffiths, Stephen Merchant and Richard O'Brien opens the festival which aims to focus on discoveries, innovation and indie filmmaking.

This year's festival also sees the return of its American indie sidebar with Habib Azar's "Armless," starring Daniel London and Janel Moloney scheduled alongside Zach Clark's "Vacation!" and "When The World Breaks," directed by Jans Fjellestad also locked and loaded.

The festival will close with Mohamed Al Daradji's Iraqi movie "Son Of Babylon," which has been submitted for the race to secure a foreign Oscar nomination slot and has already won two awards at Berlin International...

So I grabbed a midnight showing to the second official screening to Habib Azar's Armless, and I've got to say that the Next section is what it is - small films that are a little rough around the edges but manage to deliver the goods. Here we have an original story idea, that takes on a disturbing subject matter with a generous dose of comedic strokes -- think Downloading Nancy with taboo comedy - I'm thinking daytime soaps certainly influenced Azar's approach. - I'm about to begin Day 6, and I'm still in the process of finishing Day 3 coverage on the site. Fact is, there is only a limited available amount of time each day to write out something before crashing and waking up 6 hours for the next day of screenings. So I grabbed a midnight showing to the second official screening to Habib Azar's Armless, and I've got...

Here's the third of our New Breed videos on new distribution ideas and paradigms at the Sundance Film Festival. The intro: Sabi filmmakers Zak Forsman and Kevin K. Shah move away from identifying the questions toward some possible answers that may, in fact, lead to the solutions we seek. Insights from Linas Phillips (Bass Ackwards), Habib Azar (Armless), Dan Mirvish, and Brian Newman are fleshed out with more thoughts from the pre-Filmmaker Summit roundtable. New Breed Park City – Seeking the Answers, Part 1 from Sabi Pictures on Vimeo. Watch all the New Breed videos.

This has been a pretty big day for Sundance, including Twitter fights, the first big distribution deal and so much buzz it's as if Devin Ratray finally received the spin-off movie he deserves (Home Alone fans out there, say yeah!). Let's get right into it:

Celebrity sightings: Obviously Kristen Stewart is still the big paparazzi draw of Sundance 2010. Entertainment Weekly has some photos of the actress with the rocker she portrays, Joan Jett. Other hot babes being sighted include My Blue Valentine star Jessica Alba in a fur jacket (via Celebrity-Gossip), Katie Holmes, who is in town to promote two films, Jared Leto (whose head Kevin Kelly got a picture of) and Bill Gates, who attended a screening for and applauded the HBO doc A Small Act. Less popular are regular Sundance-goer Paris Hilton and questionable attendee Jon Gosselin. Real indie film fans have also been crazy for sightings of...

We all have a few deep, dark secrets that we're just sure are the peak of all things humiliating. Maybe you're a married man who is convinced that, deep down, you may be gay. Or perhaps you're a father of three ... who one day realizes he doesn't like children all that much. You stole, you cheated, you lied ... or, if you're the very unhappy lead character in Habib Azar's odd, dry comedy Armless, you simply want to have your arms removed.

Insane, you say? Borderline lunacy? Absolutely. That's probably what the bulimic teenager thinks about her problems: shameful, insane, and uniquely repulsive. And that's what is most interesting about Armless: we're offered a passive little sad-sack as a protagonist, one who has a deep-seated and rather disturbing wish, and he can't even get any true "help" because he's simply too ashamed of the issue.(And yes, this film is a comedy.

Habib Azar directed his first episode of As The World Turns at age 22, and has since directed over 100 episodes of the drama series, winning him a daytime emmy, as well as helming a handfull of plays and composing the music for a couple of operas. His feature directorial debut Armless will premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival as part of the Next category, a new section composed of eight American films selected for their innovative and original work in low- and no-budget filmmaking. Based on the award-winning play of the same name by Obie Award winner Kyle Jarrow, Armless is an off-kilter comedy about a woman who must comes to terms with her husband's strange secret, John wants to have his arms chopped off. Sundance calls the film "a deliciously twisted romp of comedic drama filled with mistaken identities, missed chances, and revealing consequences." After the jump you ...

We have one more Armless items for you which comes to us in the post-holiday, three weeks before Sundance period. In our profile last week, we introduced you to filmmaker Habib Azar in two parts (here and here) and now we have a first look at the trailer. I'm looking forward to the film and much of the reasons are in what Azar cites in our Q&A with him, "Armless has this weird dry and dark humor that is unsettling and enticing at the same time". - We have one more Armless item for you which comes to us in the post-holiday, three weeks before Sundance period. In our profile last week, we introduced you to filmmaker Habib Azar in two parts (here and here) and now we have a first look at the trailer. I'm looking forward to the film and much of the reasons are in what...

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Total Images: (0)');">Armless tells the story of John, a man who suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder, a real-life psychological condition in which an individual paradoxically doesn't feel "whole" unless he loses one or more major limbs. When he leaves his wife and goes to find a doctor willing to amputate his arms, it triggers a twisted romp filled with mistaken identities, missed chances, and tragic consequences. Armless utilizes the structure of a classic farce, combining it with a darkly philosophical tone. It also explores the ways in which a culture with so much wealth can come to fetishize suffering. But at its heart, Armless is a fable about acceptance, a meditation on trust, love and marriage.Directed by Habib Azar and starring Daniel London and Janel Moloney.Watch the trailer for Armless after the jump.<center><embed src="http://cdn.springboard.gorillanation.com/storage/xplayer/yo033.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="460" height="300" swliveconnect="true" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" flashvars="file=http://www.filmsnmovies.com/media/sconfig.php?id=12959&width=518&height=457&siteId=329&pid=fsnm002&autostart=false&allowscriptaccess=always&usefullscreen=true"></embed></center>...

Armless tells the story of a man who suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder. When he leaves his wife and goes to find a doctor willing to amputate his arms, it triggers a twisted romp filled with mistaken identities, missed chances, and tragic consequences. Armless utilizes the structure of a classic farce, combining it with a darkly philosophical tone. It also explores the ways in which a culture with so much wealth can come to fetishize suffering. But at its heart, Armless is a fable about acceptance-a meditation on trust, love and marriage.

Adapted from Kyle Jarrow's play of the same name, Habib Azar's Armless will be taking its bow at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and the first trailer has just arrived.  It's very much an indie but looks to be very compelling stuff as well.  Check it below.

Have you ever wondered what are the films that inspire the next generation of filmmakers? As part of our monthly Ioncinephile profile (read here), we ask the filmmaker the incredibly arduous task of identifying their top ten list of all time favorite films. This month we bent the rules a little, our profiled filmmaker Habib Azar explains why below, and keep in mind in less than a month, he'll be presenting his debut film, Armless at Sundance. He gave us his top seven (*) as of December 2009. - Have you ever wondered what are the films that inspire the next generation of filmmakers? As part of our monthly Ioncinephile profile (read here), we ask the filmmaker the incredibly arduous task of identifying their top ten list of all time favorite films. This month we bent the rules a little, our profiled filmmaker Habib Azar explains why below, and keep in mind in less than a month,...

The lucky inaugural eight include: Habib Azar's Armless, Linas Philips's Bass Ackwards, Sultan Sharrief's Bilal’s Stand, Katie Aselton's The Freebie, Barnes Bros' Homewrecker, Adam Bowers's New Low, Michael Mohan's One Too Many Mornings and Eyad Zahra's The Taqwacores - which has nothing to do with the docu film Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam: (same subject, different film). - If you see or hear me calling this the Miranda July's (you'll have to have seen Me and You and Everyone We Know) section it's because of its no greater or lesser than emblem ( &lt; = &gt; ). John Cooper officially had a stroke of genius with the announcement of the section earlier in the year, and the batch of eight shows the festival is certainly getting back into the "indie" spirit of things again or, it will be seen as Sundance stealing some of the...

Adapted from Kyle Jarrow's indie play of the same name, Emmy winning director Habib Azar's debut feature Armless will soon be making its debut at the 2010 Sundance Festival.  Story?

Armless tells the story of a man who suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder. When he leaves his wife and goes to find a doctor willing to amputate his arms, it triggers a twisted romp filled with mistaken identities, missed chances, and tragic consequences. Armless utilizes the structure of a classic farce, combining it with a darkly philosophical tone. It also explores the ways in which a culture with so much wealth can come to fetishize suffering. But at its heart, Armless is a fable about acceptance-a meditation on trust, love and marriage.

We're keeping a close eye on this one and have the first block of stills below.

On Wednesday the Sundance Film Festival unveiled the films competing in late January 2010. Yesterday they announced the rest of the line-up of independent films vying for attention for industry types and the curious public.

The entire list of 53 films is below, but here are a few that stood out to me from the premieres alone:

Mumblecore directors the Duplass Brothers, have a new, untitled movie starring an unusually high-profile cast compared to their usual improvisational crew. John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill, and Catherine Keener. Reilly and Keener are actually in two films at the 2010 festival.

The Company Men, starring Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Rosemarie DeWitt about corporate downsizing.

Rodrigo Cortes’ Buried, starring Ryan Reynolds as a man buried alive in a coffin. I’ve read the script and its great. More on that as soon as I can.

The Runaways, the...

Sundance 2010: Next (<=>) One Too Many Mornings by Michael Mohan Film info from the Sundance press release. Armless (Director: Habib Azar; Screenwriter: Kyle Jarrow) — In this off-kilter comedy, a woman comes to terms with her husband’s strange secret. Cast: Daniel London, Janel Moloney, Matt Walton, Zoe Lister-Jones, Laurie Kennedy, Keith Powell. World Premiere Bass Ackwards (Director and screenwriter: Linas Phillips) — After ending a disastrous affair with a married woman, a man embarks on a lyrical, strange and comedic cross-country journey in a modified Vw bus. Cast: Linas Philips, Davie-Blue, Jim Fletcher, Paul Lazar. World Premiere Bilal’s Stand (Director and screenwriter: Sultan Sharrief) — Bilal, a Muslim high school senior in Detroit juggles his [...]...

We are 49 days out and counting down to Sundance 2010. Yesterday, we unveiled the list of competition films for the upcoming festival. Today, we have your list of out-of-competition films which include Premieres, Spotlight, New Frontier, and, my personal favorite, Park City at Midnight, which has featured past entries like Black Dynamite, The Descent, and Saw.

Check out next year’s lineup for the out-of-competition films:

Premieres

To showcase the diversity to contemporary independent cinema, the Sundance Film Festival Premieres section offers the latest work from American and international directors as well as world premieres of highly anticipated films. Presented by Entertainment Weekly.

Abel / Mexico, USA (Director: Diego Luna; Screenwriters: Diego Luna and Agusto Mendoza)–A peculiar young boy, blurring reality and fantasy, assumes the responsibilities of a family man in his father’s absence. Cast: Jose Maria Yazpik, Karina Gidi, Carlos Aragon, Christopher Ruiz-Esparza, Gerardo Ruiz-Esparza. World Premiere

Cane Toads:...

Yesterday we got the list for the films playing in competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and today we get the rest of the films that will be featured and there are quite a few that make 2010 look much stronger based on pedigree alone than I have seen in quite some time. Variety has a big write-up detailing the categories and more on the festival right here, but I am just going to offer up the titles and let you sort it all out.

The titles already in the RopeofSilicon database are linked.

Premieres

All films are from the United States unless otherwise noted Abel (Mexico-u.S.), the directorial debut of actor Diego Luna, written by Luna and Agusto Mendoza, about a peculiar young boy who, as he blurs reality and fantasy, takes over the responsibilities of a family man in his father's absence. With Jose Maria Yazpik, Karina Gidi,...

In addition to the competition titles which were announced yesterday, Sundance has announced the remainder of their line-up and it includes some titles we’re already familiar with along with a huge number of premieres.

Also on the docket are two new series: Next which showcases low/no budget films and Spotlight which highlights films which festival programmers deem worthy of extra love including Enter the Void (review) and Lourdes (the trailer for which I really liked).

I’m particularly excited to see some of the titles in the New Frontier program but overall, the line-up is an impressive one but the Kristen Stewart fan in me is excited to see her turn as Joan Jett in The Runaways and I think it’s fair to say we’re all dying to see Vincenzo Natali’s hotly anticipated Splice (trailer).

In the Midnight section, Adam Green's Frozen is sounding mighty find,...

From the Sundance Institute: “A new section composed of eight American films selected for their innovative and original work in low-and no-budget filmmaking.” Armless (Director: Habib Azar; Screenwriter: Kyle Jarrow)—In this off-kilter comedy, a woman comes to terms with her husband’s strange secret. Cast: Daniel London, Janel Moloney, Keith Powell, Laurie Kennedy, Matt Walton. World Premiere Bass Ackwards (Director and screenwriter: Linas Philips)—After ending a disastrous affair with a married woman, …...

Sundance released their slate for 2010. It includes:43 documentaries on the Middle East12 films about friends who 'discover' something33 movies about people you've never heard about1 comedyHopefully the lineup this year is strong but it doesn't look that way compared to last year. Last year we had Push (Precious), that Lil Wayne documentary that never went anywhere, Mystery Team which might make my top ten, Moon, Mike Tyson documentary, Cold Souls. Just so much last January that was excellent. I hope I don't go out therer and freeze my tail off just to see...I don't know, a documentary about a former Pakistani prime minister or something silly like that.Here's the lineup so far: Premieres To showcase the diversity to contemporary independent cinema, the Sundance Film Festival Premieres section offers the latest work from American and international directors as well as world premieres of highly anticipated films. Presented by Entertainment Weekly.

The Sundance Film Festival's competition lineup for 2010, announced Wednesday, might demand that audiences wear their serious caps. But the out-of-competition selections allow programmers and viewers to cut loose a little.

The 53 films that populate this year's Premieres, Next, Spotlight, Park City at Midnight and New Frontier sections run the gamut from the cosmically experimental to the star-studded and silly. There is indeed something for everyone at this year's event, which runs Jan. 21-31 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

As usual, Premieres collects work involving the industry's higher-profile talent, none more so than John Wells' feature directorial debut, "The Company Men," which stars Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper. Mexican actor Diego Luna's directorial debut, "Abel," will screen, as will Philip Seymour Hoffman's "Jack Goes Boating."

Michael Winterbottom has the rare distinction of having two films in...